Biography
Tom Dalzell
"War breeds slang: and the longer that war the better. Other than World War I Vietnam was perhaps combat's greatest creator of new language. In his wide-ranging, authoritative dictionary, Tom Dalzell, one of America's leading lexicographers of slang, has brought it all together: from mummy sacks to the long long duck's back and the remfs to the Arvins. This a unique, unrivalled take on a war that remains a key moment in modern history. Tim O’Brien has written about ‘The Things They Carried’; now Tom Dalzell brings us ‘The Words They Used’" Jonathon Green, author of Green's Dictionary of Slang
"A very valuable collection of Vietnam War slang."- Gerald Cohen, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA
"Tom Dalzell’s extraordinary Vietnam War Slang invites us to look back through the words and meanings of the Vietnam era — fascinating in themselves — into the culture they signify. Each entry includes a contemporary quotation or two, illustrating use of the word in question, and thus the dictionary is an anthology of fading voices from distant decades amplified into the twenty-first century, voices we need to hear. It should be in every American library, on every word-lover’s bookshelf, and assigned in every university course about the period or the phenomenon of the Vietnam War." Michael Paul Adams, Indiana University, USA
